Is it possible to have a dual boot with Linux and Win XP in the same PC?
Will this cause problems? interferences???
I like both OS, and i want them both on my PC but i am afraid of trying it, please help.
yeah, easy. look up ‘bootloader’ ‘grub’
even easyer install mandrake linux, it sets it up automaticly with a really pretty startup screen menu.
It is possible. I second mandrake, but that’s personal preference.
When asked where to put the bootloader, I always put it in MBR (Master Boot Record). I have had inconsistent results when putting the bootloader on the primary partition.
I’m currently dual booting XP and Mandrake 9.1 on a Toshiba Tecra laptop. Works very well.
can someone explain me what is mandrake and how do i get Linux?
Do i instal lunix over win XP ?
The easiest way is to install XP first. Leave the space for linux unpartitioned. If you only have one drive and it is already partitioned fully (like most drives are) you’ll have to use something like partitoin magic to create some space for linux on it.
You are going to have to use the linux version of fdisk to create at least two partitions for linux. Unlike windows, linux uses a seperate partition for its swap file (windows just uses a file on your main partition). So, you’ll need to create a linux main partition and a linux swap partition.
Mandrake is one of many distributions of linux. Others are Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, etc. I’ve never used Mandrake. Red Hat and Debian are fairly easy to install. Slackware is much more difficult to install but gives you more control over what goes where. Each of the distributions comes with its own way of installing, but once you get everything installed Linux is Linux. It doesn’t matter much what distribution you used to get it on there.
I usually use slackware but I wouldn’t recommend it to a newbie. Red Hat isn’t bad and makes it relatively easy to get the Xwindows stuff up and running.
http://www.linux.org/ has links to all of the different distributions and a bunch of documentation and all sorts of goodies. Start there and do a bunch of reading before you try anything.
Install XP first , use its partition software to create the windows partion and install.
I can only speak of Mandrake for the linux part , however it spotted the unpartitioned section of the hard drive with partdrake and prompted me to create the swap partition and the root partition.
Declan
Another option is VMWare. With that you can run another OS within a virtual machine on the host OS. You could have XP as the host and install any number of other Linux or Windows OSs.
Or VirtualPC, formerly of Connectix, now of Microsoft. You can boot XP and then run Windows95, Windows98, WindowsNT Server, OS/2 Warp, Red Hat, Slackware, BSD, and MS-DOS 3.3 in separate windows. If you have enough RAM, you can run them all concurrently.
Just to expand on what others have written. In a “dual boot” system, your hard drive is partitioned into two or more areas (or you may have two or more separate hard drives). Windows is installed onto one partition/hard drive, and some flavor of Linux is installed on another. When you boot up your computer, the bootloader (a small program that’s not really associated with an operating system) asks which operating system you would like to boot. Note that to switch between Windows and Linux, you need to reboot the computer. There shouldn’t be any interference between the systems since they’re not aware of each other.
I have set up several systems with Windows XP and RedHat 9.0. In my case, the computers came preloaded with Windows XP and the hard drive was partitioned into C: and D: drives. During the RedHat install, I reformatted what had been the D: drive and used it for the Linux installition. Things get a little tricky here since Linux actually uses multiple partitions, but a decent distribution should handle this for you. You can also set up partitions that can be read by both operating systems; just be careful about compatibility (Linux can read some Windows partitions, Windows can’t read Linux partitions).
The second option is to use an emulator. In this method, you have one primary operating system (either Windows or Linux) and then run the second as a program within the first. This allows you to switch easily between the two, but may have some issues (I’m not sure how the network connections are handled, for example).